Note for non-Australian visitors

In Australia "Liberal" is Right-Wing Neo-Cons; economically liberal, socially repressive, tax the poor to subsidise the rich. Republican is also a good thing, as opposed to being a lackey of the British monarchy.

Campbell Newman, probably saving about $3 on his budget has abolished the Minister for Women
The Office of Women will now fall within the responsibilities for the Minister for Communities, Child Safety and Disability Services.

text of image: Hello Boss, sorry can’t come in to work today, still a woman

What this is saying, by conflating women’s issues with child safety, reduces woman in importance from being fully-functioning human beings, to important only because of their ability to produce children.

Either that or being a woman is a disability, which says that being a woman is less than, a disabled male, a deviation from normal (ie male), impaired, deprived. (euphemisms for disabled via wikipedia, and do not reflect Turn Left’s view, but how this move can be interpreted by the electorate).

And to all those women who voted for the Liberal Nationals – you reap what you sow.

Liberal and National politicians across the country are cutting back on programmes designed to help the environment, but have their hand out for Federal – taxpayer – money when it comes to cleaning up after extreme weather events attributed to changing climate.

Can-Do Campbell it turns out is Can’t-Do when it comes to protecting the environment. One of his first points of business was the closure of the $430million Queensland Climate Change Fund. Probably one of his second points of business was checking with Clive Palmer, to see if that was acceptable, possibly.

Yet, when it comes to floods, bushfire, cyclones, it is Liberal leaders who have their hands out waiting for Federal funds to aid communities devastated by these natural disasters.

The warning from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change overnight that human actions are leading to more deadly and costly extreme weather events should give Liberal leaders from Tony Abbott to Campbell Newman pause for thought, the Australian Greens said today.

One thing that gets forgotten, or obscured when politicians are making decisions that affect our lives – it is not just the environment, the climate, the planet. It is all of ours, it is our planet, not just the faceless billionaires. So turning over the care of the planet to the very people who profit from its destruction does not make much sense, and even less sense is the voters who support those moves.

Two tweets of the week, both dealing with the Queensland election. The first is election victory, the second is the unbiased way the media in the rest of the country reacts to the change in government.

images of tweets, used for illustrative purposes and is no way meant to suggest the tweeters in anyway endorse the contents of this post
text by @redglitterx

The blame lies with Anna Bligh and the Labor Party campaign. Anyone who had the sickening misfortune to watch the mawkish self-pity of Anna Bligh concede defeat before Saturday, can watch this and tell me would you vote, let alone volunteer to hand out How-To-Vote cards and campaign for our ALP cause, if you saw this video?

Campbell Newman didn’t win this election, nobody likes a smug millionaire with a chip on his shoulder. Although to be fair, a leader he is, much more so than Anna Bligh, and he managed to galvanise a talentless and listless bunch of LNP candidates from the reject shop. Whether they’ll be able to support his ‘vision’ remains to be seen.

ALP strategists should be immediately fired. They stuffed up our NSW campaign and completely fucked up our QLD one. Clearly a bold consistent message wasn’t in their planning. You can argue that Bligh broke plenty a promise; but you can argue that all politicians renege on promises when world reality collides with policy.

Time for a new strategy and strategists. Time for new leaders. Time for aggressive progressive policies. Time to Act. Time to bring in new and youthful ideas and enthusiasm. Time to destroy the left/right paradigm and deliver a more pertinent message one of which is the individual/community vs the Corporations as exemplified by the Occupy Movement. In this way the youth will come to think of ALP as a mainstream progressive political party that listens and not just a moderate Liberal Party that they’re fast becoming.

{edited to add: *source of this quote is behind a paywall – @redglitterx}

click for full size image: image from the Murdoch owned Courier Mail, 21-12-2012

Hajnal Black, the Conservative politician of this article, who stood for the Liberal Nationals in 2009, and has been supported by the Australian TEA party and the ADL (whose British counterpart EDL – English Defence League has been compared to a fascist organisation) gave “police the slip as arrest warrant remains active” against her.

But you say, no sane person would see that as an invitation to kill any politician. The ad is talking about a change and features bullet holes. When the USAmerican Fox-television host Sarah Palin used crosshairs on a map of congressional districts including that of the Democrat politician Gabrielle Giffords, someone took that seriously, and Giffords was subsequently shot in the head.

Why are bullet holes even necessary to make your point about a change in government?

Edited to add: it has been pointed out to me, Waste in The Sopranos-speak, has a very different connotation, where it is used as a euphemism for kill someone

When first was gainfully employed, there was a guy at the call centre I worked at called Campbell who irritated the shit out of me. There was nothing I liked about him. His hair & teeth were perfect, he came from a very wealthy family, he spoke as if he was sucking John Howards’ underused blue testicles; in short he was a condescending know-it-all asshat and although he was the classic rich family fuck-up, he was the sort of guy whose family’s wealth and connections will always to his aid in times of trouble.

Campbell Newman is that wealthy society fuck-up threatening Queenslanders with a Liberal National Party government. Although most likely to lose his chance of a seat in Ashgrove – if there’s a God, then she would know what to do – opinion polls suggest a Liberal National walkover; with perhaps a Bob Katter seat thrown in to appease those conservatives still in the gay closet. You know the ones, ask Christopher Pyne & Alexander Downer.

To be perfectly honest, Campbell Bjelke-Newman was an incompetent mayor with many anecdotal evidence of ‘dodgy’ deals that nobody really investigated; because that’s not how they do things in Queensland.

Recently CMC exonerated Campbell; I don’t why, considering every Queenslander knows of the Newman’s rich history of dodgy deals as mayor.

Anna Bligh (descendant of William Bligh) unfortunately will never put a foot right. She looks unprepared and stressed and perhaps in reality has a terrible team, those banana-benders are lackadaisical even in times of crisis; floods for example. In reality, the ALP have turned QLD around and dragged it kicking and screaming from Bjelke-Petersen’s corrupt Calvinists racist-fascist 17th century clap-trap into the 21st century of progressive values, equality of the sexes being one.

Unfortunately like their NSW brethren, the QLD ALP are probably on the nose. Twenty years is a long time in marriage, whilst twenty years in government is an eternity. In additions like their NSW colleagues, QLD ALP’s lurch towards neo-liberal policies such as privatisation will only benefit the true heirs of the ALP social democracy; the Greens.

So comes the election this week, which will be a big test for the conservatives who as hot favourites expect nothing more than a white-wash. The Liberal National Party have coerced John Howard from his local bowling club to come and assist Campbell Newman in handing out how-to-vote cards. A victory for the conservatives means they control the West and East coasts of Australia for the first time since 80s.

The ALP will leak votes to the Greens who are running a quiet campaign, whilst the rednecks from the right will all vote for the LNP. The winds of change unfortunately suggest a Reich-wing victory, if that’s the case, and I hear Campbell Newman has lost in Ashgrove, you’re more than welcome to party at my place like its 1799.